January 22 sermon

Hi folks--here is the sermon from this past Sunday. Feel free to comment here or e-mail me if yo'd like to be part of an e-mail discussion group.

"But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days or three nights."

You know, one of the main questions that most modern people have about the book of Jonah is, "Is it real?" Did this actually happen? Was there really a person named Jonah who was disobedient in this way and was he really in the belly of a whale for three days before the fish
threw him up on the beach? Is this real?

The other option for interpreting the book of Jonah is as a kind of parable. The parables were, of course, stories that Jesus told to illustrate an important point about the Kingdom of God. When Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son, we don’t really care that the father and the younger son and the older son never physically existed; Jesus invents characters and invents a story that is designed to teach us a lesson. And so Jonah may also be a sort of parable, a story invented by an author who was inspired by God’s Spirit to write this story that teaches us important truths and reveals a lot about the human condition.

I’m not exactly sure whether the story of Jonah is meant to be historical or not, whether we are supposed to think that Jonah really existed and had all of this happen to him. There are good arguments on both sides. Those who say it is a sort of parable say that the book looks different than the other prophets. For instance, the book of Jonah is very different than the book of Micah which comes after it. Most people believe Micah was a real prophet, and the book of Micah is very different from Jonah. The book of Micah is taken up with the prophet’s sayings and writings, and there isn’t much of a story to it. It’s pretty much: "The word of the Lord came to Micah, and this is what he said." And that’s very typical of the prophets. But the book of Jonah is very different. There’s not much focus at all on what Jonah preached or wrote, but there is a lot of emphasis on his story. So some people believe it’s more likely that this story was written by a different person and intended to be fictional.

Some people, though, believe that the story is supposed to be true. The book of 2 Kings does refer to Jonah, son of Amittai, so we know that Jonah, son of Amittai, is a real person. These people say, "Hey, if the author was just making up a story, why would he attach a real person’s name to it? If the author was just making up a story, the author probably would make up a name for the lead character rather than pretending it happened to an actual person." That would be like someone writing the fairy tale Cinderella and calling it "Dorothy Gardner." And this too is a good point.

In all, I think it’s impossible to know for sure whether this is history or parable. I tend to believe that it’s historical, but that’s just me, and that’s just right now. Each of us will have to make an informed decision as to what we believe. But just a couple things to keep in mind as you make this decision: for 1750 years of Christian interpretation, people generally accepted this story as historically true. There is no sense in the early Christians that perhaps this story was made up, maybe it didn’t happen, maybe it’s not real, etc. They just weren’t bothered with the questions that really seem to bother us. It’s only in the last 200 years or so that we’ve started to wrestle with the question. Just because have people have said it for ages doesn’t mean it’s always right, but just remember that most Christians have understood it as historical.

The other thing that I must say is that if you choose to say it was a story, please don’t say, "Well, it has to be a story because no person could survive three days in the belly of a whale."
We Christians are people who believe in miracles. Our life depends on a most uncommon miracle, a dead Messiah coming back to life. And if that can happen, if death itself can be overthrown, then certainly, a man can be in the belly of a whale for three days before being thrown up onto the seashore. Certainly, it would be unusual; certainly, it would require some bending of the usual way of things; certainly, it would be a surprising thing. But that is, after all, the point: it would be a miracle. And God can do miracles. So you can believe it’s a parable because it’s different from the other prophets, or because it just seems more like a story to you. But don’t believe it’s a parable just because it’s hard to believe. God does things that are hard to believe everyday. If you look at Jonah and say, "Couldn’t be; nobody could survive three days in the belly of a whale" then you must remember that there was a time in which you too were completely lost and only survived because God stepped in and did a miracle in your life. If you believe God has done a miracle in your life, then be careful before you say He couldn’t do another kind of miracle in someone else’s life. You might just be surprised at what God can do when He sets his mind to it.

Whether or not the whale was real in Jonah’s time, though, we must realize that the whale is real in each of our lives. What do I mean by that? Simply this. There are times in each of our lives where we find ourselves like Jonah. Look at the first seven verses of Jonah’s prayer, where Jonah talks in detail about the terror he finds himself in as he descends to the bottom of the ocean. He says, "Out of the belly of Sheol I cried." Sheol was the name the Hebrews gave to the land of the dead. "You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me and all your waves and billows passed over me. Then I said. ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again on your holy temple?"

Jonah’s despair is palpable here. Nothing was so painful to an Israelite than the thought they would never again see the Temple. The Temple was where God lived, where the glory descended from above, their connection to the glory days when they were strong and the Temple was the hope that those days would come again. To be in the presence of the Temple was to have hope, to know that God was and is and is to come. And here, as Jonah is sinking deeper into the ocean, and the water sweeps over him, he thinks, "I’m a dead man, and God has completely forgotten me. Out of sight, out of mind. God has forgotten me and I will die for sure and I will never again be blessed to see the holy temple of our God."

We all go through times like Jonah, where we sense that we are completely forgotten by God. We are overwhelmed by the swelling tide of life in suburban America, that place as hollow as a cheap chocolate Easter bunny, where everyone is OK on the outside but empty inside; where everyone is keeping just busy enough to keep the demons at bay for one more day, afraid of the day when they cannot be busy anymore, afraid of who they are beneath what they do. And as we sink beneath the waters we fear that we will never look upon God again. We fear that we’ve missed God somehow and that moment of discovery will never come amidst these wasted waves, not in the slick TV preachers, not in the weekly cold repetition of religious obligations, not in the self-help books with five easy steps to spiritual fitness.

And in so doing, we cry out to God. But like Jonah, sometimes we find ourselves sinking still deeper. Listen to Jonah in verse 5: "The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains." In other words, I had seaweed and heaven only knows what else tangled up in my hair, and I was so deep that I was at the very base of the mountains. He goes on and says, "I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;" "I was going into the land of the dead, and from there there is no return."

But then the text turns: "Yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, in your holy temple." In other words, "as everything began to close in, as everything was turning dark, in my last moment, you finally heard." And we know that when God heard, at Jonah’s last moment, a whale came out of nowhere and swallowed him up.

It’s a strange way to save someone, a whale. When we think of the way God stepped in to save people in the past, we think of how he parted the Red Sea. Now that was a miracle! Or we think of the way Jesus healed leprosy and blindness, or the way in which the Spirit empowered the disciples to do great miracles of power in the early church. Those were miracles, straightforward healings–people had needs and miracles met them instantly.

But a whale is, shall we say, a different way to save someone. Probably as Jonah is sinking to the bottom of the sea, he’s thinking, "Well, at least things can’t get any worse." And then he sees a whale which comes up and in one fell swoop swallows him right up, whole, down into a dark, dark, whale’s belly. And as he travels over the bumpy whale tongue, past the uvula, through the esophagus, into the massive, dark, stomach that smells like fish and whale gas, he’s thinking, "Huh; well, I guess things could get worse," and prepares to die. But then he reaches a stop and he realizes, "Hey, I’m still alive! I’m still here!" And for the next three days, Jonah remains in the whale and ponders the strange way in which God saves us. He could have dried up the sea instantly; could have reached down and dragged Jonah up and placed him up on dry land. But instead, God says, "I’m going to send a whale to eat him and vomit him up on dry land."

Why would God save Jonah with a whale? Why not any other more sensible, efficient way? I'm married to a mathematician, and I've come to have an appreciation for the sensible and the efficient. And a whale is neither. Maybe it suggests God has a unique sense of humor. But maybe there is something that happens in a whale that just doesn’t happen any other way. Maybe there, in the whale, was time for Jonah to reflect, to compose himself, to pray, in a way that Jonah wouldn’t have done if God saved him in another way. Whatever the case, God seems to think that Jonah needs to drip a little bit of whale juice before things get back to normal.

Let me suggest that the same God who saved Jonah with a whale saves us in very similar ways.
It might seem absurd that God saved Jonah with a whale, but then think about how God saved you. If I were God, and there were a person I wanted to save, a person who believed in me and wanted to serve me, here’s what I would do: I would treat that person special. I would give them the nicest house on the block. I would protect them from ever being hurt physically or emotionally. Their favorite baseball team (the Phillies of course) would win every game; their churches would be filled with perfect pastors, and perfect friends who never gossiped about each other, never let each other down, took part in everything the church did, had great ideas and tons of energy. They would never fail at anything they tried. That’s what I would do if I were God.

But I’m not. And those of you who live the Christian life know that it is nothing like I just described. We don’t usually live in the nicest houses on the block. We open ourselves sometimes to real physical and emotional pain, because we live as a counterculture in the world, sometimes a despised counterculture. We attend churches with real people, fallible pastors and parishioners who fail each other time and time again. We fail and many times in our lives, the life of discipleship is a hard slog, a tough go where we fall short time and again, get up, dust ourselves off, pray to do better, and fail again. And don’t even get me started on the Phillies.

Do you see what I’m saying? Don’t be surprised Jonah was saved in such a strange way–because there’s something strange (and wonderful) about our salvation as well. God seems to think that we need to drip some whale juice in our lives too. Before the Christian life reaches its consummation, before we feast with Christ into eternity, we’ve got to spend some time here on Earth, in the whale’s belly. It sure beats drowning, but things will not be perfect here.

And yet, for as strange as the whale’s belly is, it is only there throughout the book that Jonah gets it right. Jonah gets it wrong again and again when he’s on his own; he messes up again and again when things are normal. But in the whale’s belly, he gets it right. He says, "Those who worship powerless idols forsake their true loyalty. But I will sacrifice to you thankfully because you are a powerful God." In other words, "people worship things not worth worshiping all the time. And eventually, those folks are going to realize how foolish they are and give it up. But I will never give you up, Lord, for you are worth worshiping." It’s hard to believe this is the same Jonah who so consistently messes up, who so consistently is wrong, because here–in the whale’s belly–he gets it right. Maybe God knew what He was doing after all, saving Jonah with a whale.

And maybe–just maybe–God knows what he is doing with you too. I don’t know exactly what’s going on in each life here today, but like Jonah, you might be thinking, "This is a strange way to be saved"–I mean, it beats drowning, but it sure ain’t perfect. Let me say to you that it was in a similar situation, in a stinky, fishy whale’s belly, that Jonah learned to praise God, that Jonah learned what was really true and important. It was in the darkness inside a whale that Jonah learned to perceive the light. Maybe you are where you are now so that God can teach you the same things.

In Luke 12:32, Jesus is talking to worried disciples. And he says, "Do not fear, little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." He is talking to disciples who are fearing not having shelter and food, not having enough to live. And he’s telling them, "Don’t worry about these little things, because whether you see it or not, you are kings. Whether you know it or not, you were made for more than this world. Whether you recognize it now or not, there are more important things–and God will give you everything you need to get there.
And so it is for us who are in the whale’s belly. Something much more important is happening than just having nice houses, having everything we want, having a pleasant life. Something greater is at stake than our personal happiness or fulfillment. Like Jonah, we are being prepared, re-wired to praise God instead of running away from him. Like the disciples, we are being fit to receive a Kingdom, fit to be citizens of a Kingdom of light where God dwells and lives in communion with His people always. May this be true of this day for you and each day you remain in this whale’s belly. Amen.